The conflict at the center of Toni Morrison's "Sweetness" concerns the societal issue of colorism, which Morrison highlights by depicting colorism happening within the intimate space of a mother-daughter relationship.
Colorism—also known as shadeism—is discrimination or prejudice against dark skin tones that usually comes from people within the same ethnic or racial group. While racism involves discrimination or prejudice targeted against people of a different ethnicity, colorism involves biased treatment of both people from other ethnic groups and of people within the same ethnic group.
In the United States, the roots of colorism can be traced back to the era of slavery, during which time a racial hierarchy based on differences in skin tone positioned black people as subordinate to white people. In a system that enslaved dark-skinned people, mixed-race descendants of white and black people were more likely to attain freedom and basic human rights if they appeared to be white. During the post-Civil War era of Jim Crow laws, segregation denied people of color access to "white only" public and private spaces and facilities, as well as civil rights and economic opportunities, leading some light-skinned black people to pass as white.
Although the term colorism is most in use in the United States, discrimination based on skin color occurs in cultures throughout the world. Research into discrimination based on skin color finds that many people prefer lighter skin tones, a bias that exacerbates discriminatory hiring practices, economic inequality, health inequality, and higher conviction rates of minorities. Because of biases that associate light skin with beauty and purity, the practice of skin lightening and bleaching through cosmetics that use harmful chemicals is widespread in cultures throughout Asia and Africa.
